[Illustration: "’Yes, you can be of service,’ he whispered."] "So little out of the way that we are bound for the Castle, my maid and I, at the end of a fatiguing journey. If this is civil war, I’d as lief have peace. There were no adventures on the road." Kit could not understand her gusty mood—for that matter, she could not understand herself—but he was not concerned with whimsies. Folk were dependent on him, and he was answerable for their safety. He recalled that she was kin to the folk at Ripley Castle, and accepted this surprising fortune. "Listen, and remember," he said sharply. "These lambs may quit their supper any moment and disturb us. Tell Lady Ingilby that we caught a messenger on his way from Skipton. His letter was to the Roundheads here in Ripley. ’That termagant, Lady Ingilby, is making her house a meeting-place for Cavaliers’—have you that by heart?" "Oh, yes," assented Joan, laughing at herself because he was not the suitor now, but the lord paramount, who must be obeyed. "Proceed, Captain Metcalf—or have they made you colonel since yesterday? Promotion comes so quickly in time of war." "You can flout me later," said Christopher, with country stolidness. He repeated the rest of the message, and made sure that she had it by heart. "My folk are up the moor," he finished. "They’re waiting near the High Cross till they hear what Lady Ingilby asks of them." Joan Grant again, for no reason that she understood, grew lenient with this man’s bluntness, his disregard of the glamour she had been able once to weave about him as a spider spins its threads. "Your folk are as near as High Cross, and you ask no more of me?" "What is there to ask, except that you get into your carriage and find Lady Ingilby? My work’s done, now that I have a messenger." She looked him in the face. In all her life of coquetry and whims, Miss Grant had never stood so close to the reality that is beauty. She smiled gravely, turned without a word, and got into her carriage. "Pansy," she said, as they were covering the short journey to the Castle, "I have met a man to-day." "Snares o’ Belial, most of them," murmured Pansy. "He was tied by ropes, and I think he was in pain, his face was so grey and drawn. It did not seem to matter. He had all his folk at call, and would not summon them, except for Lady Ingilby’s needs. He forgot his own." "Knighthood," said Pansy, in her practical, quiet voice. "He always had the way of it." So Miss Grant boxed her on the ears for her pains. "Small use in that, girl, if he dies in the middle of the business." She stopped the carriage, summoned old Ben Waddilove, who rode in front to guard her journey. "Ben, do you know the High Cross on the moor?" she asked. "I should do, Miss Joan, seeing I was reared i’ this country before I went to Nappa." "Then ride for it. You’ll find Squire Metcalf and his men there. Tell him that his son is sitting on a bench at Ripley, tied hand and foot."